How Travel Has Helped Us Process Our Grief

Women Who Travel | Condé Nast Traveler

Condé Nast Traveler

Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.4 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2021

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the past year, we've all dealt with various levels of grief, both personal and collective, centered around the pandemic. For many, it has also resurfaced familiar emotions and struggles experienced over previous losses of friends and family. To process that grief, Traveler contributors Jordi Lippe-McGraw, who lost her father in a plane crash in 2010, and Nneka M. Okona, who lost her best friend four years ago, have usually turned to travel, a coping mechanism that COVID-19 has challenged. This week, we're talking about how they've used travel to work through the complicated emotions of grief, why they want us to talk about those feelings more publicly, and what advice they'd give to those feeling adrift with grief right now. Know that the episode isn't all sad, however. As Nneka says, “[you've] got to spice up grief and make it less gloomy sometimes.”

Find a full transcription of the episode here: www.cntraveler.com/story/how-travel-has-helped-us-process-our-grief-women-who-travel-podcast

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Read Jordi's piece: www.cntraveler.com/story/i-was-scared-to-fly-after-my-dads-plane-crash-but-travel-helped-me-overcome-my-grief

Follow Jordi: @jordilippe

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone, you're listening to Women Who Travel, a podcast from Connie Nass Traveler.
0:08.0	I'm Meredith Carey and with me, as always, is my co-host, Lolly Eric Kozloo.
0:12.0	Hello!
0:13.0	We've been talking a lot about how to use travel to celebrate, the birthdays missed, the family
0:17.0	we haven't seen, and the friends getting married when we are able to move about more freely. But while trips offer an excellent opportunity to celebrate, they also have a healing quality,
0:26.2	one we need now more than ever as COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. approach 550,000. So this week,
0:32.6	we're talking about travel and grief. Joining us are traveler contributors, Jordi Lippie McGraw, who recently penned an essay
0:39.3	about traveling in the wake of loss, and Nekka M. Akona, author of Self-Care for Grief,
0:44.3	100 Practices for Healing During Times of Loss, which will be in bookstores in August. Thanks for
0:49.4	joining us. Thanks for having us. Thanks to y'all for having us. So to kick things off, I wanted to ask the two of you whether travel has always been a tool for healing.
1:02.1	And to that end, what sort of travel have you found yourselves turning to?
1:06.1	For me, travel wasn't always about healing.
1:09.8	Growing up, it was something that was about excitement, exploration,
1:17.2	time with family. That's what travel was for me. And then when my dad died in a plane crash
1:25.1	in 2010, travel became something that was very fearful for me.
1:30.3	And once I started getting back on the road again and getting back in the air and taking
1:35.3	flights, then it became a healing process for me. And that's what it has been for me for the last
1:41.5	10 years. While there is a lot of excitement and joy and
1:46.5	sense of wanderless and adventure wrapped up in that, with each trip that I take, it still
1:53.3	pulls me out of that haze of grief that is going to forever be with me and reminds me of how far I've come. So it has become much more of a
2:04.0	transformational experience than just a pure sort of like joy, wanderless-based one for me.
2:12.2	And Nika, how about you? You know, I would say that travel has always had such a huge
	...

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